Whitman and Working Class Reform
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you that thought the President greater than you? or the rich better off than you? or
the educated wiser than you?” with “souls of men and women!/...! own publicly
who you are, if nobody else owns...and see and hear you, and what you give and
take-y what is there you cannot give and take (25-31)?” For Whitman, the acceptance
of hierarchy inherent in the conservative program runs anathema to his egalitarian
vision. The reaction to the pomposity of moral reform in the defense of the prostitute
and the rejection of wisdom-in-status in the dismissal of the President’s inherent
“goodness” point to the specific areas wherein Whitman parts with conservative
reform.
However, Whitman has reservations about the radical program as well.
Specifically he rejects the divisiveness of the radical’s version of the labor theory
of value. In the poem “Who Learns My Lesson Complete?”, Whitman lists those
who should learn his lesson: boss, journeyman, apprentice, merchant, clerk, porter,
customer, editor and author, and insists, that it “is no lesson...it lets down the bars
to a good lesson” and that “the great laws take and effuse without argument (5-7).”
Herein, the poet rejects the fiery “lessons” of radicals like Mike Walsh and argues
that there are “great laws” which “take” without debate or conflict. Whitman also
embraces others that workers traditionally considered a threat to the value of labor:
African-Americans. Whether a danger in the form of free blacks, or in the misty
terror of “Slave Power,” free-soil politics of the working-class wing of the
Democratic Party viewed cheap, black labor as a threat to the dignity and
profitability of their work. In “Song of M yself’, Whitman rides with an AfricanAmerican teamster who is “calm and commanding.” Even the sun, which falls on
his “crispy hair...perfect limbs” seems to acknowledge his dignity. In the end.
Whitman beholds “the picturesque giant and love[s] him (217-225).” Here is
Whitman, the bard whose only claim to superiority is his knowledge that he is on
par and connected with everything else, communing with a worker against whom
radical reformers defined themselves. This new vision required a rethinking of the
labor theory of value for its hierarchical and divisive elements which, according to
Whitman, clouded America’s vision of its true organic and egalitarian nature.
The Symphonic Theory of Value
In rejecting hierarchical and divisive reform. Whitman essentially rejected
the labor theory of value. Instead, Whitman created a new theory which can be
called a “symphonic” theory of value in which all elements of the production process
equally contribute to create the national “movement.” Therein, value is not bestowed
on one who makes a product (a prospect up for varied interpretation), but is the
result of all “citizens’” various “parts” in the economy and nation. Though this
vision is rather novel in the economic sphere, it is not so in the political.
Political theorists as early as Aristotle envisioned the state not as made of